Physicist Schools Kids On How To Tell Science From Science Fiction

December 06, 2000|By LeAnn Spencer, Tribune Staff Writer.

If there's one thing that physicist Lawrence Krauss can't stand it's what he calls the bogus "science" so prevalent in popular culture.

Speaking to 450 visiting middle school pupils and their teachers at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Tuesday, Krauss chastised television for airing programs such as those that purport to show an alien autopsy.

He also objected to programs that show such scientifically impossible maneuvers as spaceships that make right-angle turns. He blasted newspapers for printing horoscopes and griped about politicians who promote the teaching of creationism as opposed to the science of evolution.

The one thing that Krauss does like, he emphasized, are facts.

"How are people supposed to know what is fact and what is fiction," Krauss complained, noting that popular media often do not make clear the differences between reality and fantasy.

Krauss, who is chairman of the department of physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, also is the author of a book "The Physics of Star Trek," published in 1995. The book exposes science-fiction feats not possible under the laws of science.

Krauss' lecture was part of the school's ongoing Great Minds program in which scientists and educators are invited to speak to students from the academy and area schools.

The middle school pupils who attended the lecture, paying $5 each, were from dozens of northern Illinois institutions. Some pupils said Krauss' lecture was too advanced for them to follow. But one, Jamie Larson, a gifted 7th grader from Mt. Prospect's River Trails Middle School, acknowledged that it was at least "interesting." She said she enjoyed learning why spaceships can't make right-angle turns. (It's because the G forces would be too great.)

But overall, Krauss took on issues not at the forefront of many middle schoolers' radar screen, including concerns that many Americans don't know basic scientific facts, such as that the Earth orbits the sun and that astrology has no scientific basis.

He complained that science education in the U.S. is failing in large part because of underprepared teachers and pop culture.

"You are our future," he told the children, "and I'm concerned that the things that make science so useful are being lost in television and the media. This is a chance for me to tell you how to make the future better."

Krauss' advice to the pupils included being a skeptic, asking questions and not taking any thing at face value. Above all, he advised, learn.

"If you want to see things that are more fascinating than the `X Files,' go pick up a science book," he said. "The universe is amazing. It's a huge, gigantic place where anything, no matter how unusual, if it can happen it does happen.

"Black holes are out there and they collide. Every now and then, stars collapse from the size of the sun to the size of Chicago in a tenth of a second," he said.

Krauss concluded: "The universe is a remarkable and exciting place. We don't need the nonsense. We don't need the stuff that isn't true to make the universe more exciting."